


because truly being here is so much

by nevernevergirl



Series: the war is over and we are beginning [7]
Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Kid Fic, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, lmao it just deals with 310 but they're fine, mentions of canon erased character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23306440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevernevergirl/pseuds/nevernevergirl
Summary: On June 14th, every year, they all have nightmares.In 2022, and in 2028, Gert and Chase navigate the lives they didn't live, and the ones they did.
Relationships: Chase Stein/Gertrude Yorkes
Series: the war is over and we are beginning [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685389
Comments: 11
Kudos: 82





	because truly being here is so much

_2022, Massachusetts_

They all have nightmares on June 14th.

They all have nightmares, like, all the time. Because they have a shitload of trauma from magic-and-alien-induced circumstances they can only half-unload onto a therapist without truly raising some red flags.

But every June 14th, all six of them have the same nightmare, give or take a few details depending on the perspective: Morgan Le Fay in the hostel. Their parents, scrambling. Standing together, falling apart. Gert, rising from the floor with her shirt sticking to her back with blood already starting to seep through her sweater, her coat. Gert, proud and defiant and righteous. Gert, in Chase's arms, gone.

That's where Gert's nightmares end. The rest of them get flashes after that, of a future none of them recognize. The working theory is they're dreaming of those years in the other timeline, on the anniversary of the day they were erased. Alex has hunches about timelines and multiverses; Chase will jump in with the theoretical physics of it all, but he can't really handle too much of the specifics without getting freaked out. 

Gert doesn't think it matters. It’s one shitty night a year. They dodged a bullet, and this is one more freaky consequence of their freaky lives they have to deal with. End of story.

Hers ended like an hour ago; she woke up sweaty, but cold, and breathing hard. Like it always does, it took a few minutes to convince herself that she’s still alive. She had wanted to wake Chase up, to keep him from getting to the lonely parts, but she'd tried that last year, and he'd just thrashed and cried in his sleep until it was over anyway. When he finally woke up, after the dream was over, they’d both felt even more like shit than they had the year before.

So she'd made a cup of coffee at 3 a.m., dumped half the sugar canister in it, and settled on the couch with a book to wait it out. It's a shitty distraction, because she's been reading the same two pages of Men Explain Things To Me for at least 20 minutes now, but it's keeping her from going to check on Chase, or calling Molly to wake her up. 

In another world, they waited years to be able to get her back. She can wait out a few hours of nightmares on this one shitty day. 

She’s read _the battle for women to be treated like human beings with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of involvement in cultural and political arenas continues, and it is a pretty grim battle_ five times when Chase skids out of their room, panting hard. In different circumstances, he’d look ridiculous, running in like a cartoon character while wearing nothing but Superman boxers and mismatched crew socks. He’s drenched in sweat, she can tell even in the low light of the single lamp she’d turned on, and his hair is a mess, with clumps sticking to his forehead. He grips the doorframe to keep his balance, and when he sees her, his face shifts from panic to shock.

When she moves, it’s too fast; she drops her book and jostles the side table, and coffee kind of spills everywhere, but it’s not important. She gets to Chase and she smiles, even though she feels like she’s buzzing out of her skin. She reaches up, placing her hands against his face.

“Hey,” she says, keeping her voice soft, hushed. “Hey, it’s okay. It was just a dream.”

He brings a hand up, fingers tentatively, carefully wrapping around her wrist. His eyes dart back and forth, searching her face. When he breathes, really breathes, it’s shaky and relieved.

“You’re okay,” he says, voice hoarse. 

“Yeah,” she says. She feels like she’s going to cry. “I’m okay, Chase. None of that happened. Not to us.”

He nods a little, absently, still focused on her face. She runs the pad of her thumb across his cheekbone.

“Hey,” she murmurs. “Do you want to sit down? We can sit down.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“I’m not. You know I’m not,” she says, softly, pulling back just a step. She laces her fingers with his and walks backward, carefully, to lead them both to the couch. 

“We’re in our apartment,” she says, softly, because he still looks dazed. She traces absent circles on his thigh with her fingertips, and watches the rise and fall of his chest as his breathing settles. “In Massachusetts. We’re leaving in a couple of days, though.”

She nods toward the pile of boxes on the opposite side of the room, and he follows her gaze.

“We’re roadtripping back to LA for the summer,” she says. “Like we always do.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Yeah, I know.”

“We’re okay. We’re safe. That wasn’t us.”

He closes his eyes. “Could have been.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “But it wasn’t. We’re the lucky version, Chase.”

He takes a deep breath, and when he opens his eyes, she can tell he’s back. He looks tired, but not haunted; she’ll take it. 

“Sorry,” he says, quietly. Gert shakes her head, and he manages a small smile in return. He lifts her hand off his thigh gently, and takes her hand in his before lifting it up, gently kissing her knuckles. “How long have you been up?”

Gert shrugs. “An hour. Maybe a little more. Not that long.”

She moves closer to him, leaning against his chest; he shifts to wrap an arm around her shoulders, like they’re moon and tide.

“Same as last year?” he asks, twisting a strand of her hair around his finger. 

“Mm. Yeah. We don’t have to relitigate it,” she says, sort of primly—to make him laugh. And he does: he snorts a little, and she can feel it moving in his chest. They both grin, for a moment. Gert bites her lip. “Do you feel like telling me what happened after?”

“Not really,” he says, wryly. He shakes his head. “Nah, might as well practice talking about it before Alex and Nico want to, like. Map the whole thing out, right?”

“Chase.”

“No, it’s okay,” he sighs. “I mean, not _okay_. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” she says, gently. “You know I do.”

His smile is soft. She wants him to do that all of the time.

“It was kind of like the last couple of years,” he says, quickly. “Our room at the Hostel was still a lab. I still had Alex going through the abstract. I was pretty close to getting the old machine my dad built working, so I could send a message back.”

Gert frowns. “Oh, shit. The one your mom said he got?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he shrugs. “Molly was….she tried to get me out of my room and I—”

He stops, shaking his head. Gert grabs his wrist, stroking the soft skin above his pulse point.

“Not you,” she says, firmly. “A different version of you, and a different version of Molly. Who went through a lot of shit that made them people you’re never gonna be.”

It’s something she’s said before, about a million times. It’s probably easier for her to wrap her mind around, because there’s no alternate Gert, not beyond those two shitty minutes with Morgan. Being dead in the multiverse makes it feel a little more abstract. But she believes it. And she thinks Chase wants to believe it. There have been other days, and there probably will be even more other days, where this turns into a debate about potential and Chase’s deep-seated fear of it, and they’ll take notes so he’ll remember to bring it up to his therapist. But right now, it’s 4 a.m. on June 14th.

Chase just nods. 

“There’s something else,” he says, voice low. “I was...there were sort of two of me? I think?”

Gert frowns, pulling back and sitting up just enough to look at him. “What?”

“Like. I was there from two different times. I couldn’t really tell what was going on, because he wasn’t from the right year, I think? But I think that’s who was in the Hostel that night.”

Gert nods, slowly, thinking. “He looked older than you look now,” she murmurs.

“I must have traveled back to 2022 first,” he says, thinking. “There were two Alexes, too. I think the girls were all from one time, though.”

Gert takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

Chase raises an eyebrow. “Okay?”

He’s looking at her like he knows better, like he has no problem with telling her he knows better, and the full force of the past three years hits her like a train. They’ve had three years they weren’t supposed to get that got them here.

“It’s a lot,” she blurts. “The more we figure out about what happened. How we got here. It’s a lot to think you all did that for me. It always is, everytime I think about it, but. Multiple timelines. That’s a lot.”

“You died for us,” he points out, and it’s half-petulant and half-earnest, and it makes her laugh a little, because it’s so dumb. It’s so Chase. He looks at her like she’s kind of crazy, but then he’s grinning too. 

“I didn’t do that,” she says half-heartedly.

“Well, neither did we,” he says, smugly.

She loves him so fucking much. She leans up to kiss him on his dumb smug mouth, and then he’s tugging her up, and they’re shifting again, moving together, and just like that, she’s in his lap.

“I think,” she murmurs, her lips against his. “I think we maybe aren’t great at coping mechanisms.”

“Depends on your definition of great,” he says, punctuating it with a kiss to her jaw.

“You’re so stupid,” she says, grinning.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “You know, we have, like, three hours before the west coast nightmare debrief.”

He waggles his eyebrows suggestively. Gert laughs, a surprised, throaty thing.

“So stupid,” she echos. But she shifts in his lap, straddling his hips. Chase grins widely, settling his hands on her waist.

“Depends on your definition of stupid.”

They can dissect the multiverse some other time.

  
  
  
  


_2028, Los Angeles_

On June 14th, they all have nightmares, but it’s been different since the third year. 

Molly, Karolina, and Nico don’t dream about a life they haven’t lived anymore. They wake up when Gert does, and over the years, they’ve huddled together on the couch or over the phone or on a video chat, distracting each other until the boys wake up. 

Alex stopped asking Chase to help him piece anything together about five years in. In the more recent years, in the days after, they barely speak at all, like they’re ashamed of whatever those fucked up versions of them did. It goes back to normal pretty quickly, though. Chase and Alex are too strong for it to not go back to normal. They all are.

On June 14, 2028, there’s a new nightmare—a memory.

This time, it happens the way it really, truly happened: the same chaos, doubled. Chase, ten years older with the unimaginable weight of decades more on his shoulders. Nico, shielding, the plan, failing, Gert, throwing a wrench in the natural course of things like she always would, in any timeline. Chase, bleeding. Chase, fine. Everything, over. 

Gert sleeps through the whole fucking thing. 

Chase wakes up before her, if only by seconds. He’s shaky and the sunlight starting to stream through the blinds reveals a shiny veneer of sweat gleaming off his forehead, but he’s with her. It’s different; she knows it’s different right away, before she really has time to think about it. 

She feels numb, like her mind hasn’t caught up with her body yet.

She sits up, and meets his eyes.

“Holy shit,” she whispers. 

And Chase laughs.

It’s a deep laugh, the kind that comes from the stomach and makes you double over and kind of looks like it hurts, in a good way. Gert watches him for a second, biting her lip, before she’s laughing, too. And then it’s the two of them, huddled in their bed at the crack of dawn, laughing hysterically. Gert thinks she’s crying a little, too, but she’s too overwhelmed to really think about it. She buries her face against the crook of his neck, and he wraps his arms around her back. 

They breathe each other in.

“You saw it?” he asks, breathing the words against the side of her head, his lips brushing against her skin. “Everything?”

“Ten years,” she says, feeling a little breathless. “Chase. _Chase_.”

“It’s over,” he says. She can feel his hands shaking as they clutch at her, but he sounds sure. Gert feels sure too.

“What a shit show,” she mumbles, wiping at her eyes. Chase snorts. 

“Wouldn’t be us if it wasn’t.”

“Seriously, that was, like, barely a plan. You had a sand-dispensing ankle bracelet, but you couldn’t come up with a real plan?”

Chase holds up his hands, smiling impossibly wide. “Hey, not fair. _I_ didn’t do that.”

Gert looks at him, really looks at him. He’s only 28, but she can see the faint beginnings of laugh lines starting to form at the corners of his eyes. There’s a shadow of stubble blanketing his jawline, because he’s on this engineering project for work he’s really excited about, and he always forgets to shave when he gets like that. He’ll get rid of it once their daughter complains he’s too scratchy for goodnight kisses on the cheek, though. 

This version of Chase Stein doesn’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders. This Chase never got swallowed up by grief so dark and vast there wasn’t anything left of him. 

This Chase is frowning; she’s been quiet too long.

“I’m okay,” she says. “It’s just. A lot.”

“Mm. Yeah,” he says, watching her carefully. She sighs, worrying their worn comforter between her thumb and forefinger absently.

“I never got to see it before,” she blurts. “What you were all like. I know you all told me, and I could tell something was off, when I saw the other you that night, but that was—”

“Intense?” he asks, and he’s biting his lip like he’s been waiting for years to have this conversation. She thinks about his hesitance, every June 14th before this, the way he’d look down while he explained his nightmare to her. He’s been afraid of this. Afraid of her seeing what it took to get them here.

“Yeah,” she says, but she says it gently and she grabs his hand while she searches for the right words. “It’s...overwhelming. Like, the idea of ten years, and everything that happened in 2022, and the day before we found out about Pride—I remember that, I remember how weird you were acting, but you...that was ten years for you.”

She stops for a second, trying to catch her breath and her thoughts. Chase squeezes her hand, nodding encouragingly.

“And Molly, the girls, they were moving on, and I know none of it’s what they would have picked, I know they’re happier now, but they gave up these lives they’d tried to build for me, and I guess I knew that,” she shakes her head. “And, fuck, Alex, it’s like he didn’t let anyone help him through everything with his mom, and I can’t tell what Vic’s deal was in that timeline, but it didn’t sound good, and…”

She trails off, taking a deep breath. “And you were so fucking sad. That’s all you were.”

“Yeah,” he says, quietly. “It was pretty fucked, huh?”

She forces a small smile. “Yeah. That’s one way to put it.”

“Gert—”

“I know it wasn’t you,” she says, like she says every year, and he smiles at her, sadly.

“But it could have been,” he says, softly, and he squeezes her hand when she frowns. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ve thought it, too. You know I have.”

“I don’t want that for you,” she blurts. “I know you’re a different person because I didn’t die, and you’ve had ten years to get away from it, and I knew it was bad, but seeing it was—”

“Overwhelming?” he says, wryly, and she nods. He bites his lip. “I’ve thought about it a lot, okay? And I think...if you just hadn’t wanted to get back together, it would have sucked, but I could have understood something like that—”

“Oh, hey, Chase—”

“No, no, I don’t mean it in, like, a self-deprecating way, or whatever” he sighs. “I think I could understand you picking whatever future you wanted, you know? I just wanted you to have one. But I think, in a world where you didn’t have that….I wouldn’t have understood it. And I think if I knew there was a way to get that back for you, it would have felt like I was killing you all over again. If I knew a way to bring you back and didn’t try it, I was choosing to for you to be dead.”

Gert’s heart feels heavier than stone.

“Babe.”

“Hey, I told you, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it,” he says, shrugging. “And you’ve always been right. That’s not me. I got to make different choices. He was fucked up because of what happened, we all were. But I think...I think me, this version of me? I got choices. And that means I get to be happy with you, not just because of you.”

Gert can feel how goofy her face looks. She feels the way she felt when she was 18 and fresh out of actual literal hell and finally, finally aware of how much she loved this person. 

“You know, you’re kind of really smart,” she says, and he smiles widely.

“Don’t tell my wife,” he says, mock-seriously. “She thinks it’s hot when I’m an idiot.”

“Holy shit, shut up,” Gert says, leaning forward with a kiss to make him do just that. He laughs against her. 

“See? Case in—”

His voice breaks off with a pant as Gert’s hand works it way down his chest and stomach to the waistband of his boxers.

“I said shut up,” she says, smugly. He’s opening his mouth to fire back when the unmistakable creak of floorboards sounds off from just beyond their bedroom door. 

They shoot apart with (very) practiced speed; Gert’s patting her hair down into something less incriminating as the door opens.

“Mama? Daddy? Are you awake?”

Amelia’s head of dark curls pokes through the doorway. She’s clutching the stuffed elephant Molly bought her as a toddler so they’d match. 

“Yeah, Bug, we’re up,” Chase says, getting up and sliding out of bed—Dad Mode Fully Activated. Gert smiles as he lifts Amelia into his arms; she’s getting too tall for Gert to reasonably pick up, but Chase scoops her into his arms easily and dumps her onto the bed, unceremoniously. She squeals, scrambling against Gert and glaring at him.

“Dropping people isn’t nice, Daddy,” she says, pouting as Gert laughs and kisses the top of her head. 

Chase flops down next to them, sighing dramatically. “My bad. How will you ever forgive me?”

“Chocolate chip pancakes?” 

Gert and Chase exchange amused glances over her head. 

“Yeah, okay. Maybe when the sun is up a little more, yeah? It’s not pancake time yet.”

Amelia sighs, long-sufferingly, but nods. Gert plays with her hair absently.

“Why’re you up so early, Millie Moo?”

“Had to pee,” she shrugs. “And then it was light out so I was gonna see if Lacey wanted to play, but then I heard you and Daddy talking. Were you up because of the baby?”

Gert swallows a laugh; they told Amelia that she’s getting a brother or sister a couple of months ago, and she’s been obsessed with the idea ever since. She’s not sure she _likes_ that she’s getting a brother or sister—it depends on the day. But she’s hyper aware of the baby, always, and Chase keeps insisting that’s a good sign. And, you know. Sometimes he’s right. 

“Nah,” Gert says, shaking her head. She glances at Chase, smirking. “Your Dad stole the blankets and woke me up.”

“Okay, that’s just slander,” Chase says, grinning. Amelia ignores them in favor of poking at the slight swell of Gert’s abdomen. 

“But do you think the baby’s awake too? Do babies sleep if they’re not real babies yet?”

Gert makes a face, shrugging. Chase frowns.

“I have no clue, munchkin,” he says. Amelia twists to look up at him, unimpressed.

“Daddy. You have a phone. Look it up,” she says, and Gert can hear it, how much their daughter sounds like her. She tries not to laugh as Chase sighs heavily, grabbing his phone. 

Amelia shifts on the bed to curl into his side, peering over at his screen. Chase looks up at Gert over her head, grinning as he mouths _the lucky version._

Gert grins.

Yeah. Yeah, they really fucking are.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my friend Sarah's birthday which WAS admittedly a week ago, but we got here eventually and that's what matters! I hope the kids don't feel too out of left field—I have roughly 10000000 headcanons about this I couldn't shoehorn into this and want to write eventually, but just know both of them were definitely oopsies and amelia was probably made right after the 2022 bit, because gertchase deserves a vaguely comically but ultimately okay crisis!


End file.
